


Memorandum

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: It isn't the weather Holmes minds. Written for JWP #5, and a continuation (of sorts) of JWP #2,A Fortnight Away.





	Memorandum

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Still more of a snippet than anything else, but there might be a plot emerging, or something like one. A follow-on (of sorts) to JWP #2, [A Fortnight Away](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11385645). A Fahrenheit/Celsius joke, if you care to look for it. And absolutely no beta. Written in a huge rush. Be very afraid. I know I am.
> 
> Author's Notes: Written for JWP 2017 #5: Note to Self. Anything from a pencil jot on a paper cuff or a string on a finger to a modern sticky note or a cell phone alarm. Doesn't matter who the writer is, so long as there's something he/she needs a reminder for.

Generally speaking, I am unaffected by extremes of heat or cold. I know Watson, and Mrs Hudson too, believe that hot weather has an adverse effect on me.  It does not, not in the way they mean. It does not make me _physically_ uncomfortable. But the sloth it brings to the criminal world – the rise in petty violence and commonplace murder, with a commensurate drop in any creative or ingenious schemes worthy of my attention – does grate upon me. I cannot bear to be idle. Give me a case to work on, and I do not care whether the thermometer reads thirty or ninety. No case, and I stew with the rest of London, as I heard my landlady mutter under her breath.  
  
Watson has deserted me for the dubious charms of minding another fellow’s business. No one from the Yard has crossed my threshold for a week. Even the papers disappoint, with nothing but commonplace scandal and trivial domestic details. A politician seen walking out with the marriageable daughter of a senior member of a rival party. An editorial on the public hazard of ladies’ parasols. A warning of illness in one of the danker corners of Cheapside, utterly predictable in this weather. A fire that consumed nearly half a block of houses on…  
  
I frowned. The street name was familiar to me, of course, but there was something else about it, some recent conversation where this street might have come up in context.   
  
A conversation with Watson, not long ago.  
  
I throw down the paper and hasten over to his desk. He took his medical bag with him, and his most recent journal, but as I expected, his desk calendar is there. It is a perpetual one, a shining thing of brass and dials that Watson changes every day, without fail, whenever he is there. Next to it is a long metal spike fixed through a handsome bit of walnut. On that spike, impaled and held in stratified order until Watson gets in one of his cleanliness moods, are the little notes he writes himself, reminding him of this and that. Almost as good a record of his thoughts as the words he jots on his shirt-cuffs, some days, and unlike his cuffs, easy enough for me to access when the man himself is not present. I skim through the torn scraps of paper and reused calling-cards, seeing pencilled notations about buying tobacco and penned names of clients and places. I find what I am looking for about a third of the way down: Jackson’s name, followed by a set of dates, and an address.  
  
An address on the very street that half burned down last night.  
  
I discard my dressing-gown, retrieve my coat and hat, and am out the door in a matter of moments. I do not see Mrs Hudson, and I am glad of it. I would not have said anything to her in any case, and I am in no mood to brook any delays.  
  
Time enough for words later, when I know anything worth telling.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 5, 2017


End file.
